Key Details

Biography

Georgie advises on the protection, exploitation and infringement of IP rights worldwide. She helps clients develop their IP strategies, focusing on risk and reputation management.

She has significant experience in relation to the strategic management of global brands, including trade mark and domain name portfolio management and has advised many global corporates and household names on their worldwide trade mark matters.

Georgie is known for her expertise in dealing with international and cross border IP disputes. She advises on forum shopping, identifying favourable jurisdictions for rights owners to bring proceedings or to defend proceedings. Georgie is the author of Sweet & Maxwell’s The Trade Mark Handbook, 'Civil Court Procedures in Trade Mark Cases', and is a regular speaker at conferences in the UK and US on a range of IP issues.

She has been recognised for many years as a ‘leading individual’ in Chambers and Partners.

As part of Irwin Mitchell's role as Official Legal Services Provider of the World Para Athletics Championships London 2017, Georgie provided IP and brand protection support.

Recent highlights:

Acting for Capita PLC and its related companies on its global brand protection strategy, protection and enforcement of its trade mark portfolio.

Acting for the Law Society in relation to its brand protection, dealing with the enforcement of its various names, logos and copyright protected content.

Advising a leading software company in relation to proceedings concerning the misuse of confidential information, copyright and database rights by former employees and officers.

Advising TV presenter and a former Paralympic gold medal winner in relation to his image rights and the IP protection and enforcement of a TV graphic system that simplifies Paralympic disability classification.

Successfully defending five defendants in injunctive proceedings concerning patent infringement and passing off relating to a medical device.

Acting for numerous clients in various internet related cases such as domain name disputes, website fraud and abuse and advertising and marketing issues arising out of key word sponsoring across Europe.

Market view:

"She's accessible and responsive, and you always get a clear view from her." – Chambers & Partners, 2018

Read My Comments On The Latest News

These astonishing statistics prove in black and white how serious the issue of cyber security is. The fact that almost two-thirds of companies in a major city fell victim to hackers in 2016 should ring alarm bells for businesses across the UK.
Cyber-attacks are becoming ever more common, and it isn’t just huge corporations being targeted but small businesses as well. Companies of all types need to understand that it is not a case of ‘if’ they will be attacked but ‘when’.
Businesses need to take expert advice on how to minimise the risks of a security breach. Should an incident occur, there need to be plans in place to lessen the reputational and financial impact – if the situation is not properly managed, the damage can be long-lasting and significant.

Today’s decision to leave the EU doesn’t mean that UK businesses will not be affected by new far reaching data protection rules which are due in 2018. If a UK business trades in the European Union and offers goods or services to individuals in the EU, the new regulations will still be relevant. It will also continue to apply if a UK business monitors the behaviour of individuals in the EU – this could even extend to the use of cookies.
If a business trades only in the UK, the issue is less clear as the UK Government may choose to include equivalent legislation anyway. It is generally accepted that the data protection laws are out-dated and I suspect that data protection will not stay the same for long, even though we are leaving the EU. In other words, there will be some reform. We just don’t know what it will look like.

"This decision will surprise many, as it was thought that due to widespread publication of the identities of ‘PJS’ and ‘YMA’ outside England and Wales, particularly on the internet meant, that the interim injunction was rendered effectively worthless. However, the Supreme Court has found that there is a difference between the identity of the celebrity being revealed on internet pages and social media and what the court called the 'media storm' that would follow, both in the newspapers and online, if the injunction were to be lifted.
"The Supreme Court criticised the Court of Appeal’s decision to lift the injunction commenting that it had given too much weight to the rights of freedom of expression and insufficient weight to PJS’s rights of privacy. The Supreme Court was keen to point out that these rights should always be balanced and neither has preference over the other; there was simply insufficient public interest in the sexual exploits of a celebrity to justify publication.
"Following the Ryan Giggs case it looked as though the age of celebrity injunctions was at an end, with the internet and social media effectively rendering the embargo on publication of Giggs and his activities pointless. Following today’s decision, that is not the case. Quite to contrary, the Supreme Court’s decision is likely to mean that far more celebrities will now have the confidence and fortitude in looking to the Courts for privacy injunctions to stop details of their private lives being published."

This is a stark wake-up call for businesses in relation to cyber-attacks. Crime of this nature is overtaking physical crime and businesses must not bury their heads in the sand and hope that the issue simply goes away or that it will not happen to them. As we have seen here, the reputational and financial impact can be very significant.
It is impossible to prevent a determined cyber-attack but a business can take steps to mitigate risks which includes taking appropriate technical and organisation measures to prevent unauthorised access or accidental loss of personal data.
What is appropriate for one business might not be suitable for another but where an organisation handles significant volumes of personal data then it surely has a higher burden to have technical measures such as firewalls, malware protection, encryption, passwords and constant monitoring so as to safeguard the personal data it holds.